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Twitter
came up with a concept last year called the Innovator's Patent Agreement (IPA)
and put a draft IPA up on GitHub. They have gotten a ton of
feedback and have iterated and improved the concept since then.

The basic idea of the IPA is that it is a
contract between Twitter and the engineer(s) and designer(s) who developed the
IP. The contract says that Twitter will not use the patent offensively nor will
anyone who acquires the patent from Twitter. It goes on to say that Twitter or
a subsequent owner could use the patent offensively with the engineer's and/or
designer's approval.

This is an important step forward in stopping questionable patent trolls. I'm not saying that all patent infringement actions are illegal...far from it. But there is a group of companies that exist only to prey on software companies using patents that should have never been granted.

It's great to see some companies worrying about ethics, and not always just cash flow...

It's the picture of Italian ice-cream in a shop of Rome, Italy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to Xconomy, on-demand delivery startup Postmates has a sweet new promotion starting tomorrow to help you get through the summer heat in New York City, San Francisco, and Seattle.

In honor of National Ice Cream Day this Sunday, Postmates wants to help you stay cool by delivering ice cream to you in less than hour.

Postmates sees it as a nod to the early success of the now defunct Kozmo same-day delivery service. Kozmo started in Manhattan and let you order a pint of ice cream from Ben & Jerry's online. It ended up becoming one of the largest distributors of Ben & Jerry ice cream.

Now, Postmates is paying somewhat of a tribute to late Kozmo, CEO Bastian Lehmann tells Business Insider.

The same day delivery space keeps on growing, now in the grocery space...

San Francisco-based same-day grocery delivery startup Instacart raised a $8.5 million series A round led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from Canaan Partners, Khosla Ventures, Paul Buchheit, and SV Angel. Instacart plans to expand outside of San Francisco by the end of 2014 and increase its current inventory of 70,000 items. Founded in 2012, Instacart has raised $10.8 million.

Google wants to do to physical
goods what it does with information: Get it to you fast.

To that end, Google is working on
a same-day shipping service dubbed ”Google Shipping Express, which will
compete with services like Amazon Prime and eBay Now, TechCrunch reports.

Besides being a data problem,
same-day shipping is a much larger infrastructure problem. How can Google
possibly match the network of shipping centers that Amazon has already built
up? The key, TechCrunch’s sources say, are local Target, Wal-Mart, and
Safeway stores, which would essentially serve as Google’s own
distribution centers (as vague and outlandish as that sounds).

There was once a time when I
would have been surprised to hear that Google is working on a same-day shipping
service — “Why would an information company care about shipping speed?”– but
that time is long gone. This is a company that’s working on self-driving cars
and wearable computers, after all. Nothing Google does surprises me much
anymore.

But I’m thinking same-day
shipping won’t be enough for Google, a company that repeatedly stresses that
its goal is to get you information before
you want it, not as you want it. “When we started Google 15 years ago, my
vision was that information would come to you as you need it. You wouldn’t have
to search query at all,” Sergey Brin said just last week .

While same-day delivery obviously
fits in with the Google of today, it’s not particularly tough to envision a
future iteration of the program that would ship you things before you need them.
“Pre-day shipping” would solve all the problems of shopping online that we
didn’t know we had. Make it happen, Google.

I have been looking at sustainability investments in the supply chain space for the last few years, ranging from Sustainable Minds, which is focused on designing greener products right from the start, to ecoshift, whose technology lets you determine the sustainability of your existing supply chain--as well as many other start ups in between.

The space is emerging for sure, witness the number of companies announcing sustainability initiatives. My primary issue with the start-ups is a lack of buyers inside companies. Lots of PR, but minimal executive level support, single person sustainability offices and no budgets--yet.

I am sure that the space will eventually take off. The question is when and the answer is above--when senior executives get on board, more people are involved, real sponsors and budgets emerge.